


and here I am coming home to you

by stormilys



Category: Star vs. The Forces Of Evil
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, F/M, Platonic Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-06
Updated: 2015-12-06
Packaged: 2018-05-03 20:03:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5305013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stormilys/pseuds/stormilys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the one-thousand four-hundredth and sixtieth day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and here I am coming home to you

She leaves at the 18th year of her life with the memory of her gloved hand wrapped around his fingers and her lips warm on the corner of his mouth.

Her mother, the Mewni Queen Butterfly waits on the other side of the portal, astute and royal as usual, with just a speck of impatience and a hint of sympathy glittering in her gaze. Her father is keeping things at bay, waiting for their return at the castle. And somewhere behind him he hears the sobs of his mother, and how his dad would try and fail to shush her.

Star steps back, hesitates, and before Marco could think she has him wrapped in an embrace that was over just the second it started. Goodbye. "Don't forget me, twinsie!"

"Forget you?" Marco mutters in a tone he tries to hide and bops her on the head. She laughs (it's one of those laughs that makes this horrible, terrible churning in his stomach and tightens his chest and made everything right and wrong at the same time and it's so darn soft like _come on, laugh your usual laugh for god's sake_ , he almost wanted to tell her) while crossing her arms and he shoves his trembling hands into the pockets of his hoodie. "I'd rather wear wet socks, loser."

* * *

"You _sure_ you're okay?" Ferguson asks, his chatter overpowering the cheer among the mill of college students filing to get to their classes, leaves of papers and food crumbs littering the floor with footsteps that shuffle. Marco is overwhelmed at the sheer mundanity and tries to forget the sheer insanity that had been.

Alfonso, and even Jackie walks with him to his next class along with Ferguson and their efforts to try and cheer him up and he's grateful. He thought he was prepared and he was wrong for this was way worse than he had thought it'll go. Then they had to mention her, and the second his mouth wavers, Jackie waves them off.

* * *

Her wand was cutesy, dare he say it, and though it had wings and pink colors of all things, the power it beholds is not to be tampered with; his arm had been a testament and sometimes he finds himself rubbing his arm remembering how it whispered bad things and bad thoughts.

And sometimes the bad voice still comes back to the back of his head, in the darkest corner of his mind like the shadows that dance in his room.

" _You will always be here like the Earth boy you are; too mundane, too human, too_ safe _, for the likes of Star Butterfly._ " It says with haunting surety and it's almost funny because it doesn't come off as malicious or anything because these are facts; facts that are too true to gut him as the stiff parchment lay untouched and glittering on his desk. 

Marco knows these things, ingrains it into his hypothalamus until he memorizes each word and their meanings and adds the synonym _friend_ because it was all the both of them needed. At least she still has a place to go home to.

* * *

" _Have you_ lost _it?_ " Pony Head screams at his face, as best as she could through the mirror hours later that the stars in her eyes become twin supernovas of fury and concern. Her eyes narrow for good measure. _Stupid! "You ain't Earth Turd no more, Marco. You an Earth_ Idi-Turd _."_

It's the conversation he's never thought that will happen at two in the morning on a school night in Star's room while he stared from the floor at the plastic, glow in the dark stars she had smuggled out of his room just a few years back before the mirror notified him of the unicorn's calling. Marco is perfectly aware and waits for the words he knows that will spill out of his mouth with patience and the kind of confidence he would get from the feel of her back against his when they narwhal-blast and chop away the bad guys. "I'm only doing what's best for the both of us."

She stares at him as if he was something St. Olga wouldn't find worth reforming. "You're _luckier that you got invited in the first place._ I _, on the other hand, have to break out_."

* * *

It's too late when he realizes that he made too much nachos for one.

"Marco? Wow, big serving don't you think?" His mom says, sidling up to his side and rubbing his shoulder comfortingly. Marco knows now that it's true that no matter what he does and say, she'd know it to be the opposite anyway. Mothers. "You sure you can finish all of that by yourself?"

Marco looks at his mother and sees all the times he's said everything was okay, of dinners where he finishes first and storms up his room like a child in rebellion, all in purpose of becoming the bad boy he wasn't ought to be, and proposes alien words that make his mother's smile shine like the sun.

"Can we go on a movie marathon? Like, the three of us?"

* * *

" _You're not going?_ " It's bittersweet seeing her again if only through the mirror, as she says these words that break her heart and almost, _almost_ break his resolve. She grips her fearsome wand with battle-worn fingers while the despair in her eyes took the turn for the worse and he couldn't look anymore. " _But...Marco, why not?_ "

"It's not that! I just...am not decided just yet." He's utterly reminded of how out of his league she was as he sputters a big white lie they both know that isn't true. "I'm...I'm just kind of tied up with school and paper works and—"

" _No. No, I...I get it_." Star's smile is forced and places her hand against the mirror where he had his own for quite a while as they spoke, and it was almost as if he could feel the warm of her hand. " _I'm still your_ best friend _, if you remember. And I'm kind of missing you a whole lot over here_."

* * *

As he watches Jackie walk away with her head held high and her skateboard bumping against her hip, he doesn't see Star in her when his eyes fall to her hair and her green ensemble.

Back then he would have hit himself in the head over and over again for daring to compare the two of them. Right now, he sees nothing worth comparing; Jackie would never be her, and Star would never be Jackie. No matter how much the light would pass through their eyes to make them seem blue; green, or the way their hair moved and slipped through their fingers, it was simply not worth comparing when everything about the two of them was what made them important to him.

All he knew now was much their friendship meant to him, and what he would and wouldn't give to protect that.

* * *

Marco took pride in himself when it came to his karate. Himself, he would doubt, but never his abilities because he knew it was what made him feel like  _something_. Take karate away from him and he was just this normal, unassuming Diaz boy with his soul made of precaution. When he fights side-by-side with her, it's always laced with worries and thoughts that  _if I hit too hard I might end up bruising myself_ or  _I might break dad's pots if I kick him away_ but with her it's reckless and stardust and confidence when she would swing her wand and he sees her spirit through the strain of her muscles and infectious energy.

She's beautiful and brutal and she was definitely something, even if you take away the fact that she was from outer space.

"Point, Diaz!" Sensei booms and Jeremy stalks off, pissed and Marco tastes the victory that is his first as he thumbs his black belt. "Diaz wins!"

* * *

Pony Head called him crazy for not taking the opportunity, but Marco was sure he was demented for thinking about how much he would have left Earth without second thoughts when they've gone through several different dimensions before as the invitation is returned, thinking about nothing but King Butterfly's disappointed face as he retrieved the parchment whose contents Marco never once looked at.

"Regardless," the King shrugs in an easy roll of his stocky shoulders. "With or without this piece of paper, Marco, you're still more than welcome to go."

Marco smiles and feels everything in him revolt at the shaking of his head that makes the dip in River's face go deeper. "Thank you, but I've made up my mind."

* * *

He knows something went wrong when he finds himself opening his eyes to see his bedroom ceiling instead of the dojo ceiling and his arm, the one that had been a monster, was in a cast. Why he wasn't in a hospital instead does not baffle him but the strange tingle in his arm that makes him think that it wasn't just broken. It was the tingle of corrupted  _power_ ; turned back to that abomination after breaking again.

But, for some reason he had a difficulty accepting, it reverted back to a normal arm and Marco knows he didn't need any other proof when he knows perfectly that she had been here.

 _"Well, Star thought you wouldn't want to see her, that's why she didn't stay."_ Alfonzo replies with the answer he had been wanting since waking up, over the phone. _"What's up with that, Marco?"_

Marco's attempt at a chuckle is foiled when he feels his eyes burn and his chest constricts as he looks at this cast again, paying special attention and finally seeing her handwriting emblazoned in rainbow ink as he answers Alfonzo's question with a question that couldn't be answered.

"How many times would I have to say goodbye to this girl, Alfonzo?"

* * *

"Swinging party! Lighten up, 19!" Justin slogs his shoulder, buzzed and out of his mind. Everyone else is screaming their hearts out to a song, dancing to the beat, and chugging down to punch and nachos and college irrationality.

Today Marco is 19 and they threw him a party in one of the many frat houses ECU had despite not being a member of one. And as he looks on the party scene with no laser-eyed puppies running in the background and no bounce house they so once adored at Brittney Wong's party with a half-empty cup of root beer, he's certain that Star wasn't the planner of this one.

And somehow that truth refused to hurt anymore that it became a void instead, sucking everything in it and making nothing out of it.

* * *

It's funny how much he's contradicted himself up until this point; where Marco finds himself lying on the bathroom floor with his throat raw and his jell-o limbs and burning eyes and how much shit he was feeling that he finally admits to himself that he was quite miserable; missing Star Butterfly and how he wanted nothing else in the world but to see her.

It's four am and he's never cried on the same hour he had been born in like never before.

* * *

Perhaps he should have seen this one coming the moment Star Butterfly stepped out of his life and back to hers with her magical wand and insanity.

Karate helped clear his mind after he cleaned the mess in the bathroom; karate that is deeply ingrained to his soul, bruised his hands and split the skin of his knuckles. Marco's under in no perfect condition but he breaks and chops and splits one plank, two, three, five until his good arm felt ready to break. It hurts but it's the inside that's raw.

So when a familiar portal opens up from among broken planks and wooden splinters, he expected nothing less.

* * *

It's Ludo and his new band of miscreants, and Marco knows because there wasn't Buff Frog, Big Chicken, or Three-Eyed Potato Baby, and they're dumber and bigger and stupider than normal but that doesn't mean their numbers don't overwhelm him in his current state.

He stops resisting and falls boneless in their flabby paws and scales, and Ludo points at him with his pointed fingers with the same old sneer, spitting out Star's name with a poisonous tongue. "Eh, you'll do good to bring out _Star Butterfly_ , and once I defeat her with my _new_ and _improved_ army of minions, the wand will finally be mine!"

It's a voided promise, of course, the moment his roof is blasted off with a _Raspberry Rocketeer!_ by a very angry, and very new Queen Butterfly.

* * *

It's easy; too easy to fall into their fighting pattern. The feel and warmth of her back against his back; the rainbow flash of her clothes, the burn of adrenaline with the bite of danger and seeing stars and creating music out of the cacophonous fray between them versus the forces of evil and he's hopelessly in-love with this life all over again.

It's easier to beat the bad guy army and Marco is almost ashamed of himself that he fell to their whims so easy, moments before.

And when Ludo hustles his minions back to the portal bearing an ice pack and inciting revenge and old times, it's particularly hard to get himself to face Queen Star Butterfly and the galaxies that graced his eyes.

* * *

Marco was sure he was slipping in-between sanity and insanity, and though his body ached and his hands in particular, it was still pretty out of line to delude himself into thinking that she was really here. "You're back?"

" _Weeeeell_ ," her high-from-the-fight-with-Ludo grin turns into a grimace as she drags on that word in a familiar tone; it further confirms his suspicion when her hands rubs the wand self-consciously. Also her too-elegant dress and the glittering crown he was sure that hadn't been on her head way back. It was already sliding off her head, for Mewni's sake. "I won't say I'm _back_ -back but I kinda snuck out of my own party for reasons so my mother will probably get me later but whatever, you know? I mean it was a _party_ , yes but it was so boring! I wanna celebrate my coronation _with you_ no matter what you say and what you do and I just kinda got this thing on my mind that you were being bothered by these jerks somehow..."

She's rambling and sincere and beautiful and Marco is sure she's real because illusions are supposed to be intangible and she's real because at once, she stops talking and she doesn't bother to say "Hugs!"

And after she pulls out of his embrace with tears on her glittering gaze, she punches his arm non-gently before he's engulfed in another hug, and this one makes all the things feel right and made everything right and said everything he was too afraid to say like _I missed you_ and there's nothing else that matters but her. He realizes they're floating an inch or two from the floor and he doesn't care as her wings flutter happily against his arms.

"After a victory like this, there's only one thing to do." He says instead, and Star is starry-eyed and more than willing to finish this familiar sentence.

"Get Chinese food!"


End file.
